Best Little Stories from the American Revolution

by C. Brian Kelly

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  More than forty years in age, this Founding Father served as both a private and brigadier general in the militia, but his real contribution lay in the power of his pen. Not for nothing was John Dickinson of Delaware and Pennsylvania known as “The Penman of the Revolution.” As early as 1765 he wielded his persuasive pen in the widely read Declaration of Rights. Even better known was his 1768 Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, which condemned the punitive Townshend Acts. He followed up with the 1774 Petition to the King, adopted by the First Continental Congress, which stated colonial grievances but still pledged loyalty to the Crown. By 1775, matters had gone so far that his Declaration on the Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms—also adopted by the Continental Congress—said the colonial resort to arms was absolutely necessary for the “preservation of our liberties.” Still, as a member of the Congress, he opposed the final step of declaring independence, but once that was done, he rallied to the cause and even drafted the Articles of Confederation adopted in the late 1770s. He later served as President of both Delaware and Pennsylvania, and he was the founder of Dickinson College.

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  Doubling as a New York revolutionary legislator and a member of the Continental Congress, the aristocratic attorney John Jay missed the crucial vote adopting the Declaration of Independence—and his chance to sign it—because he was at home attending sessions of the New York legislative body. Despite that omission, he still served the revolutionary cause and the new nation in a unique combination of roles over a twenty-five-year period, beginning with his membership in the First Continental Congress of 1774. In 1776, he took on the additional post of New York’s chief justice, but became president of the Congress in 1778. Next he was U.S. minister to Spain; he helped frame the 1783 peace treaty with Great Britain in Paris; he became America’s first secretary of state (of foreign affairs, at the time); and finally, he served as the first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Congressional historians will remember him as the member who, in 1774, solved brewing controversy over each state’s voting strength by proposing that each and every delegation in Philadelphia would have one vote to cast, no matter how many members to a delegation… or people in its state.

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  This Patriot wrote the preamble to the U.S. Constitution, those immortal words that are probably just as familiar as Thomas Jefferson’s opening lines of the Declaration of Independence. In this case, the author, not nearly so famous as Jefferson, was Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania. His familiar lead into the body of the Constitution: “We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

  Serving in the Continental Congress in 1778 and 1779, he did his real work in the Constitutional Convention of 1787—James Madison, so-called “Father of the Constitution,” once said Morris provided the wording of the final draft of the entire Constitution. Perhaps not as conservative and autocratic as some historians say, he certainly played a major role in creating the new American form of government. He consistently opposed slavery on moral grounds. And who could blame him for upsetting the guillotine-minded revolutionaries of France for his involvement—as U.S. minister to France in the 1790s—in the escapes of various nobles, the Marquis de Lafayette among them?

  Battle of Long Island

  WITH THE BATTLE OF LONG ISLAND IN LATE AUGUST 1776, REALITY CAME TO the as-yet-untested American Revolution—and very nearly extinguished it. For here began a slide that lasted several months, one military defeat after another, that left even Washington so dismayed as to write (in mid-December): “I think the game is pretty near up.”

  The outlook for the still new commander in chief would brighten with his bold riposte at Trenton, New Jersey, after crossing the ice-floed Delaware River on Christmas night. Back in August, however, neither his reputation nor his young country’s fortunes had appeared quite so ready for the test of war.

  He had been wrong to occupy New York—the island of Manhattan was essentially a floating triangle that could be attacked at any point of the seaborne enemy’s choosing. He had then compounded his error by splitting his forces and placing half of them across the East River at the butt end of another island—Long Island.

  With total command of the seas, British leaders and their seasoned soldiers were in an excellent position to avenge the recent loss of Boston to Washington and his besieging Colonials. Recognizing a knockout opportunity when they saw one, the British gathered the greatest expeditionary force ever assembled in the British Isles for the assault upon New York.

  In command would be General Sir William Howe, recently forced to evacuate Boston. His admiral brother, “Black Dick” Howe, brought in the fleet, fresh from England and carrying hired mercenaries—the Hessians! Hurrying up the coast from the fighting over Charleston were Generals Sir Henry Clinton and Lord Cornwallis with their troops. In all, including sailors from their huge fleet, the British had brought some forty-five thousand men to face Washington’s already once-divided twenty thousand. In the summer of 1776, the war might easily have ended then and there—it appeared the Colonials were caught in a trap of their own making.

  Why should New York have been such a vital fulcrum? From British eyes, one may recall, the rebellious American territory was a thin coastal strip, much of it pure wilderness with no roads, from the St. Lawrence River in Canada to Florida, a distance of 1,200 miles north to south. The average “breadth,” noted the twentieth-century British military historian J. F. C. Fuller, was only 150 miles. Thus, “it was strategically a good defensive country, and therefore difficult to subdue.” To conquer north, south, and middle all at once was beyond British resources. The decision was made to subdue the politically important and heavily populated North, a task presumably to be made easier by having Canada as a base. With New York and New England under control, “even should the central and southern sectors continue to hold out, they would in time be subdued piecemeal,” wrote Fuller. “The northern sector was, therefore, what Clausewitz, the renowned German military intellectual, would have called ‘the strategical center of gravity of the war.’”

  The gathering of the king’s forces at New York was no great surprise to the Patriots, who had dug and erected defensive earthworks at key points in Manhattan and on the Brooklyn Heights, across the East River. And in Washington’s defense, it should be noted that New York was a psychological and political symbol, as well as a strategic checkpoint at the mouth of the Hudson River. Its occupation was good for troop morale, a point of pride for the Continental Congress and the would-be nation.

  But the Patriots of that day often tended to view events and possibilities through a fog of euphoria. Their expeditionary probe into Canada late in 1775 had been a debacle, but they had won the moral victory at Breed’s Hill, forced the British evacuation of Boston, and had a victory at Sullivan’s Island off Charleston to boast about, didn’t they?

  George Washington, however, was not so euphoric. He worried about short-term enlistments that allowed his troops to train and turn for home the moment training was done. Clearly, that was no way to run an army, but Washington’s warnings and complaints to Congress went largely ignored until the British, in effect, declared that if it was war the Patriots wanted, that is what they would get—Long Island would be the terrifying opening blow.

  With Washington’s halved army east of the East River as the objective, General Howe’s men, on the morning of August 22, streamed in a steady flow from Staten Island, occupied long before, onto barges towed by ships of the great four-hundred-vessel fleet. Soon on this clear, hot day, twenty thousand British troops, Hessians among them, would land on Long Island to face the American nine thousand posted at the Brooklyn Heights and in outlying woods or farmland.

  To make matters worse for Wash
ington, his split force on Long Island recently had undergone an eleventh-hour change in command. Originally, Rhode Islander Nathanael Greene had commanded Washington’s eastern army. Greene would plan and supervise the erection of the Patriot defenses. But now he came down with fever and had to be removed. Replacing him as overall commander (and not nearly as familiar with the defensive scheme) was General John Sullivan, to be ably seconded by General William Alexander, also known as “Lord Stirling” for his claim to a vacant Scottish title.

  The newly landed British and their Hessian allies enjoyed a quiet first night ashore after rushing about four and a half miles inland. The vanguard had landed near Gravesend, and only sporadic rifle fire from a few Pennyslvanians disturbed their march to Flatbush, a village three miles from the outer Patriot lines, for the night’s encampment. On the Manhattan side of the East River, Washington did not dare send all available forces, since the Gravesend landing might only be a diversion, with the real British attack to come against his Manhattan perimeter. He did transfer some additional men to Brooklyn, but more important, a steady wind kept the enemy’s sail-powered warships out of the East River for several fortuitous days.

  The British, for the same reason, could not add to their Long Island landing force until August 25. More and more convinced that Long Island really was the British “grand push,” Washington sent additional troops to his Brooklyn generals every day. The British spent their time consolidating a very smooth amphibious operation—and laying the groundwork for their next stroke. With the shift in the wind on August 25, more troops, more Hessians, began landing.

  From where might the first blow come? On the American side, the reliable and sly General Israel Putnam held down the main defensive line on the Brooklyn Heights. Sullivan headed the Americans posted in the outer countryside to the center and left, and Stirling the men on the right. Three roads led in their direction from the beaches to the right and the British lodgment. One followed the beach into Brooklyn from the right flank; another led directly to the center of Brooklyn’s frontal line; and the third snaked along Jamaica Pass, far into the left flank.

  Of the American commanders on the scene, only Stirling was more than passingly concerned about the Jamaica Pass approach. By some accounts, he posted his own guards there and paid them out of his own pocket. (The far left, nominally under Sullivan, was in fact held by Pennsylvanians from Stirling’s own brigade.) Since the pass was on the American left and Stirling was charged with holding down the right, there was little more that he could do.

  On the night of August 26 Howe’s subordinate, Henry Clinton, set off with ten thousand men behind him to launch the fateful British attack. Their favored pathway to victory indeed would be the neglected Jamaica Pass, and at sunrise Clinton and his men bulled into the American left and simply rolled it up. At his signal, the British center and left erupted against the Americans, tying them down while Sullivan’s left-side wing was pushed, collapsing altogether, into the American center and even to the right.

  Both Hessian and British taught any Americans still needing such a lesson that this revolution business was serious and deadly indeed. Sometimes not even firing a shot, the veteran Hessians worked with the bayonet. One of their own officers later said, “The greater part of the riflemen were pierced with the bayonet to the trees.” To the American right, British cannon and mortars had engaged and kept American attention for four predawn hours, occasionally lopping off someone’s head.

  Everywhere up and down the hard-fought line, the Patriots discovered that their vaunted sharpshooting prowess was, in these close quarters, to their own detriment. As Washington’s biographer Douglas Southall Freeman observed, “Everywhere the command seemed to be the same—to force the American volley and then close with the bayonet before the Continentals could reload.”

  Washington, hustling across to Brooklyn about eight o’clock that morning, faced the first real battle of his career as a commander. On the defensive from the outset, he and his revolving generals had determined to secure the Brooklyn Heights, which commanded the East River, with a line of parapets and occasional forts stretching from the salt marshes on Wallabout Bay to the north to the marshes at Gowanus Creek to the south. In front of the Heights by a mile and a half ran a row of hills, a welcome natural buffer.

  Putnam had taken overall command practically on the eve of the British attack, leaving Sullivan in charge of the outer line along the hills. Assuming that his own troops would perform well and that the enemy would advance frontally, Freeman wrote, “Washington could hope his main strategical objective would be achieved to the extent that by holding the approaches to his position at Brooklyn, he could withdraw safely and in good order to that line after taking stiff toll of the enemy.”

  But the British had outwitted the Americans with the flanking march through Jamaica Pass. In the fighting that followed, the king’s men sent the rebels streaming to the rear, with losses of 1,500 (200 actually killed) for the day, and Generals Sullivan and Stirling among those taken prisoner. Fierce rearguard fighting (Stirling and his men on the right as standouts) did enable many of the Continentals to withdraw to the rear Brooklyn line, where for the next two and half days Washington and his men waited for the next British move. This time almost certainly an assault would require head-on confrontation. Instead, the British, led by the cautious Howe, began preparation for a siege. Fortunately for the Americans, the prevailing winds still prevented British warships from sailing up the East River to the American rear.

  The weather, in fact, had been a steady ally of the Americans throughout these dramatic days. It would again be so on the night of August 29, when Washington began his famous retreat from Brooklyn to Manhattan, aided by a thick, early-morning fog. The British now had command of Long Island, but Washington’s army eluded them for the moment.

  The revolutionary path for Washington led almost all downhill for the next few months after Long Island/Brooklyn. Washington evacuated New York on September 12, but he fought off the British at Harlem Heights four days later. Next, late in October, Washington withdrew to White Plains but left a garrison holding Fort Washington at the upper end of Manhattan. Defeated at White Plains on October 28, Washington retired to North Castle.

  The British then stormed and took Fort Washington on November 16. Next, they seized Fort Lee, New Jersey, on November 19. Washington now abandoned the New York area entirely, moving into New Jersey and steadily withdrawing under pressure from Lord Cornwallis. Washington finally moved across the Delaware River on December 11 for refuge in Pennsylvania, while the Continental Congress abandoned its “home” in Philadelphia for Baltimore.

  With his defeat at Long Island, Washington was on the run until he snapped back at his tormentors the night of December 25–26 at Trenton. All the while, though, he and his army were learning and hardening in both resolve and ability—and the British, for all their pressure and minor success, had not been able to bring about a final and decisive showdown with the rebels.

  Fought Like a Wolf

  HERE’S A QUICK TRIVIA QUESTION FOR THE MILITARY HISTORY BUFF: WHO WAS the British-style “lord” who fought on the Patriot side in the American Revolution? He was almost the only American hero of any stature in George Washington’s folly at the Battle of Long Island. And it perhaps can also be said that in the early months of the Revolutionary War there was no greater Patriot hero than this same claimant to Scottish peerage.

  He was none other than William Alexander, native of New York City (circa 1726), resident of New Jersey, early brigadier general in the Continental Army, confidant and able lieutenant to George Washington, occasional scourge to His Majesty’s forces in America…and (by his claim) sixth Earl of Stirling.

  Certainly a colorful character of his day, a wealthy merchant and landowner, hard-drinking and thus typically described as “ruddy in complexion,” he had laid claim to the “empty” earldom after the fifth earl died with no son to follow him. More than a few onlookers in England were const
ernated at having a Colonial stake out the title as a collateral descendant, especially when a Scottish jury went along with him.

  The House of Lords finally put a stop to this nonsense in 1762, but William Alexander apparently was undismayed. He still went about calling himself “Lord Stirling”—and by that name he forevermore was known, even to his troops and Revolutionary officer colleagues, George Washington among them.

  He did not emerge from the Revolutionary War a great strategist, a commander of historic campaigns, or even as the victor of a single major battle…but few men around Washington would emerge with a greater collection of honorable battle stars or a greater list of little-known but important supporting roles.